bug#23840: runemacs does not seem to pass command line arguments through to emacs properly

[Eli Zaretskii]

[Please keep the bug address on the CC list, so that the discussion is
recorded by the Emacs bug tracker.]

> From: Eliot Moss <moss@cs.umass.edu>
> Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 16:01:08 -0400
> 
> On 6/24/2016 3:02 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> >> From: Eliot Moss <moss@cs.umass.edu>
> >> Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 10:57:16 -0400
> >>
> >> I use a Thunderbird add-on called "External Editor", that will invoke an
> >> arbitrary editor program, passing on the command line the name of a file
> >> to edit.  If I tell External Editor to use runemacs, the file is not
> >> opened, and any underscores in the file name appear as spaces in the name
> >> of the buffer.  I can ^X^F to the actual file, so the file is there, but
> >> something in the runemacs->emacs transition seems to have converted
> >> underscore to space in the file name.
> >
> > Don't use runemacs, use emacsclientw.exe, which is part of the Emacs
> > package on Windows.  And have Emacs run in advance, so that you won't
> > need to start a new session each time.
> 
> I get what you're saying, but I use this only for pop-up editing of emails,
> which I need to have work when cygwin is not running.  Most of the time
> I use an X version of emacs within cygwin, so I don't want a second emacs
> server floating around.

The X version comes with emacsclient as well.

> These pop-up editors I use only occasionally with
> Thunderbird and Firefox, when editing an email or text entry gets long
> (like a conference paper review).  Given the light usage, starting a new
> session is not an issue for me.
> 
> But don't you agree that the behavior of runemacs here is odd?

There's nothing wrong with runemacs, it does work as you expect.  I
don't have Thunderbird installed, but I just set EDITOR in the
environment to point to runemacs.exe, started Less browsing a file,
typed 'v' there, which is supposed to invoke $EDITOR, and sure thing,
a fresh Emacs session was started with point on the line where I was
reading in Less.  I also see that Less invoked this command:

  !\path\to\runemacs.exe -Q +29 README

which is exactly as I'd expect (the -Q part comes from the value of
EDITOR I set up, and the +29 part is produced by Less).

So if this doesn't work for you, there's some other factor at work,
because runemacs does pass the arguments to emacs.exe.  For starters,
how exactly did you set up Thunderbird to invoke runemacs?